“Ah.”
Rhy waited for her to say what Tieren had said, to feed him the Sanctuary lines, of currents, and streams, and sleep. Instead, she said, “You want to know what happens after.” And then, reading his surprise, “Oh, I know what I’m supposed to say. That we live and die and that is it. That is what the Sanctuary teaches, after all, and perhaps it is the truth. But the Veskans have priests who claim to speak the language of the dead, and in Faro, they make altars to those they’ve lost. They leave offerings, and seek their council. They lay out extra plates, and leave doors open, even in winter, so that their dead can find shelter.”
She stopped walking, white robes settling as she turned to face him. “Who is to say what is truth, and what is superstition? We choose the stories that bring us comfort. Believe what you want.”
“What do you believe?” he asked.
“Well, the Sanctuary says—”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Ezril’s mouth twitched, in a way that said she clearly knew. “I believe there are things we know, and things we don’t. We know that magic flows through everything, that the elements can be wielded and made into spells. We know that the world is guided by a natural order, and that it demands balance. But beyond that…” She shrugged. “You yourself are proof that magic still holds mystery. After all”—she tapped a finger on his shirtfront, right over his heart, and the spellwork that bound his life to Kell’s—“we are taught the river flows one way, and yet, here you are.” Her hand vanished back into her robes. “A nice reminder, that we are only guessing.”
After that, they walked together, side by side, strolling the moonlit orchard until the clouds cleared from his head, and though Rhy hadn’t called for Ezril, he was glad that she had come.
VI
Tes couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept.
A headache had crept through her skull halfway through the first night, fueled by sugar buns and bitter black tea. It thudded in time with her pulse, but she didn’t care. She was lost in the work.
The next day, she kept the shop locked tight, ignored the occasional knock at the door, the rattle of the handle, ignored the hunger mounting behind her ribs, and the snarl of her curls, ignored Vares until even the little owl stopped clicking his beak, stopped shifting his talons, trying to get her attention. Only his head swiveled now and then, mismatched pebble eyes watching as she rose, and circled the piece, studying it from every side.
“Kers ten?” she whispered to the broken object as she worked.
What are you?
It was like trying to assemble a puzzle when you didn’t know the image. At first, you simply tried to find the pieces that went together, but at some point, you started to see it, the picture that existed somewhere between what you had and what you didn’t.
“Kers ten?” she said, the words becoming a chant.
Halfway through the second day, she’d glimpsed the shape, if not the spell. It was a kind of box. Or at least, it was contained in one. But as she put it back together, the magic lined up, too, until she could finally make out the places it had tangled and torn, and how to mend them.
“Kers ten?” she asked, over and over.
Until, at last, her work answered back. Told her what it was. What it was meant to be.
Her hands froze in midair as she finally understood. A thread twisted between her fingers, waiting to be woven through, but Tes sat perfectly still, only her eyes darting over the spellwork, reading it again and again to be sure.
And she was.
Not a box at all, though it was made to look like one. No, this was a door.
Or rather, a doormaker.
A shortcut, basically, something designed to collapse distance, to allow a person to move across an unlimited amount of space in a single step, regardless of walls, or locks, or space. Which wasn’t forbidden. But it was impossible.
Or at least, it should be.
Tes knew that the Antari could create doors like this, so that meant the magic was there, it existed, but it was a talent only they could use. This device took that power, and handed it to anyone. Tes tried to imagine a spell that would give everyone the ability to see and change the threads of power, and shivered at the thought. Some gifts were rare for a reason.
And yet.
Someone had found a way to take the rarest magic in the world and put it in a wooden box. A box that sat, almost fixed, on her table. And Tes couldn’t walk away, not now. Her heart began to race, but her hands were steady. Her fingers moved, quickly now, darting like fish between the final threads of the spell as she paired and mended the last strings, the work going faster and faster until it was done.
Tes tugged off the blotters and tossed them aside, rubbing the bruised skin around her eyes as she took in the device. It looked so ordinary. Or it would have, to an ordinary pair of eyes. But to her, it was incredible. A piece of Antari magic translated into an articulated spell. It was an extraordinary piece of craft, unlike anything she’d ever seen. Tes shoved up from the stool, limbs stiff and aching, body calling out for food and sleep, but she had to know if she’d done it. Had to know if it worked.
She took up the box and rounded the counter, knelt as she set it gingerly on an empty stretch of floor. Spellwork like this needed a trigger, but the original commands had been damaged beyond use, so she’d written her own, using Arnesian, and kept it simple: Erro, and Ferro.
Open, and Close.
The word sat waiting on her tongue, growing heavier with every passing second until her mouth fell open, and the sound tumbled out.
“Erro.”
The box shivered, and strained, and for a second Tes thought it would shatter, thought she had made a mistake, bound two threads wrong among the hundred there—but then it drew itself in, like a breath, and the spell took hold. The box unfolded, the inside limned with light, threads that shot out beyond its wooden borders, vaulted up through the air, tracing the outline of a door.
The air inside the outline rippled and darkened until the shop vanished, replaced by a curtain of shadow. Beyond the veil, a scene rippled and took shape, insubstantial. The blurred outline of an empty road. Motionless. Colorless. Still.
Tes rose, and walked around the door, waiting for something to come out. Nothing did. She reached out, and brought her fingers to the door, let them hover there above the darkness. There was a draft. A metallic smell, like rust, or blood. The bitter edge of frost.
“How strange,” she said, and she must have leaned forward, just a little, as she spoke, because her fingers touched the veil and the veil wrapped around her hand, and dragged her through.
VII
SOMEWHERE ELSE
Tes stumbled.
She threw out a hand, intending to steady herself on the table she knew was there in Haskin’s shop, but it was gone. The shop was gone, too.
Tes caught her balance, just barely, and saw that she was now standing on the street outside. She looked up, expecting to see the stores that faced her own, but they were all gone, replaced by an unfamiliar stretch of pale stone wall. She shivered, suddenly noticing how cold she was, and remembered—
The door.
Tes spun around, afraid it would be gone—but it was still there, thin as a pane of darkened glass propped upright in the road. Through the doorframe, she could just make out a pale shadow of the shop she’d left behind. The box-that-was-not-a-box sat on the ground, in the center of the threshold. Its magic traced a burning line around its edge. Tes knelt and reached out to touch the device. She tried to lift it, but it wouldn’t budge, weighed down as it was by the activated spell. She stood again.